The Ministry of Culture has created a portal to review the message of non-violence to the world at large as well as to the Indian youth, besides highlighting critical aspects of the freedom struggle and Gandhiji’s message and humanism. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday dedicated the Gandhi Heritage Portal to the nation.
Minister of Culture Chandresh Kumari Katoch, Communications & IT Minister Kapil Sibal, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations Sam Pitroda were also present on the occasion.
The Journals provide electronic versions of Indian Opinion, Navajivan, Young India, etc. A sub-section provides some of the journals which make for a fuller archive of the Gandhian imagination and scholarship. Various sections of the portal cover different aspects of Gandhiji’s life including ,‘other works’ is a section that would take into account the vast and deep commentarial and memoire literature, ‘The Life and Times’ will provide slivers of information that could lead one to broader and deeper explorations. The Gallery, likewise, provides audio, visual, film material as also caricatures, paintings and postage stamps. The Portal provides a sample of each of these.
The portal has 5 lakh pages of authentic and verified information and is expected to grow to over 15 lakh pages eventually.
The Gandhi Heritage Portal is conceptualised around The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. It has placed the collected works in three languages: English (100 volumes), Hindi (97 volumes) and Gujarati (82 volumes). These volumes are interlinked to provide easy movement from one text and language to the other. The Ministry of Culture earlier gave the responsibility of the concept design, development and maintenance of the Gandhi Heritage Portal to the Sabarmati Ashram Preservation and Memorial Trust, in Ahmedabad and provided them with a grant of Rs 7.5 crore. The Sabarmati Ashram is the largest repository of Gandhiji’s original writings.
The Gandhi Heritage Sites Panel had made two recommendations towards preservation, protection and dissemination of the tangible and the intangible heritage of Mahatma Gandhi. Specifically, one of the 2 recommendations was setting up of the Gandhi Heritage Sites Mission and the other was the development of a Gandhi Heritage Portal to disseminate Gandhiji’s writings in an authentic and unabridged form.
